E.C.R Lorac, Two-Way Murder (2021)

Last year I discovered E.C.R. Lorac’s mysteries in the British Library Crime Classics, and I knew that I would need to return and investigate a lot more, because it’s a shame that her books are not better known! E.C.R. Lorac is the pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894 – 1958) (you may notice that Lorac is Carol in reverse), and this Two-Way murder is actually a manuscript that was discovered at her death and only recently published. The intro by Martin Edwards was very interesting. I managed to lure Danielle from the Work in Progress blog into a fun read-along project and we exchanged emails back and forth every few chapters, trying to find the red herrings from the legit clues.

Two-Way Murder is set in the British countryside, not far from the coast, some years after the war (WW2, that is). The annual event where everyone is going is the Hunt Ball, and indeed, as the book opens, local bachelor Nick Brent is driving his friend from London Ian McBane to the Ball. It’s cold and dark and misty, but the mood is joyful: both of them hope to dance with the lovely Dilys Maine. It seems that every eligible bachelor, or not so eligible and not so bachelor male (in the subsequent chapters) is swooning over Dilys Maine. At midnight, Nick Brent takes her home but before they even can reach her place, Nick’s car is stopped by a dead man lying in the middle of the road. Dilys has been sneaking away from her controlling old father, so she goes home by foot through a bridle path, and Nick Brent tries to alert the police.

This is only the very first chapter of a rather convoluted book. It’s a classic mystery, but the cover is misleading by presenting a 1920s or 1930s design. It’s not a closed-door mystery à la Miss Marple, and not a police procedural either. It seemed to me that Lorac couldn’t really decide what to make of it. We get to see all the characters in turn, and not one of them is straightforward with the police for various reasons. It gets really complex to track all the plot lines at times!

I have a few reservations because I feel that the plot is not as watertight as it could have been. Curiously, nobody really seems to care about the dead man on the road that much. I felt a bit disappointed at the point of resolution, all the more as Lorac insisted in having all the single women and girls married off. It’s probably not her best book, but it doesn’t discourage me from reading other books by this neglected author!